


The Birds, The Bees, and the Bears

by deadlegato



Category: Talespin (Cartoon)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:00:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25195816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadlegato/pseuds/deadlegato
Summary: Rebecca wants Baloo to give Kit "the talk" about the birds and the bees... but Baloo doesn't know what to say. His efforts to gather advice on the subject from the other men ends in disaster when it turns out no one has any good advice- but they all have plenty of bad advice.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	The Birds, The Bees, and the Bears

**Author's Note:**

> On a fic timeline, this would go between chapters 4 and 5 of Keeping Up with the Karnage-shians, but since the Karnages aren’t the main characters this time, I am posting this separately. 
> 
> -

“Baloo?” Rebecca Cunningham asked, peering around the corner of the office.

They grey bear jumped up from his resting position. “I’m working, I’m working!” he announced, grabbing anything he could to make it look like he was… cleaning up, or something. He wasn’t sure what he was doing, let along what he was pretending to do.

“Is Kit around?”

“Nah, he’s off at his club meeting thing with his friends. Why do you ask?”

“Well, his thirteenth birthday is coming up…”

“Oh, you want to plan a surprise party?!” he asked, pleased that she hadn’t come to yell at him about working… or his lack thereof.

“Well, yes, but also…” she sighed. “I don’t know how to say this other than to just come right out and say it. Kit is going to be a teenager now, which means he’ll be… starting to have more adult thoughts, asking more adult questions, and… Baloo, someone needs to have ‘The Talk’ with him. And by someone, I mean you.”

“Me? …ME?!”

“I know, I wouldn’t normally ask you do to something that requires actual responsibility, but you’re the only father figure he has.”

“I get what you’re saying but I hardly think I’m the right guy for the job!”

“Who else is going to do it if you don’t? Wild Cat?” she snorted, pointing out that Wild Cat was currently standing in a corner with a lampshade on his head because he wanted to know what it felt like to be a light, so he could better align the headlights on the Sea Duck.

“What about you?”

“He’s a young man, Baloo. This is a conversation that should be had between men.” He could tell she wasn’t going to back down on this issue, and that arguing wouldn’t get him any further. That didn’t mean he was exactly happy about it.

.

“You okay, Papa Bear?” Kit asked later as they were making a delivery run of grenadine for Louie. “You’re being unusually quiet.”

“Just… just thinking about some things, Kit,” he said distantly. “Say, Kit, what do you think about… um… girls?”

“Girls? You mean like Miz Cunningham and Molly?”

“No, I mean like… girls your own age, in your class at school.”

“Ugh, girls are such goody-goodies, they’re always tattling on us and they talk too much,” Kit snorted. Baloo felt slightly relieved. Maybe Kit wasn’t ready to think about girls yet. “Except…” Kit continued in a shy tone that unusual for him. “There’s this girl in class named Mary Louise who helps me with math homework sometimes. She’s pretty nice. She keeps talking about how she wants to go to the movies, but no one ever has time to go with her.” 

Baloo sighed deeply. Okay, so maybe he did have to worry just a little bit. First things first though, he needed to teach Kit how to read the room. “Gee, Kit, have you um… thought that… maybe she’s hinting she would like to go to the movies with you?”

“I tried to invite her, but she wanted to see a mushy romance film and I only had enough change for the superhero double feature,” Kit replied. Baloo didn’t know whether to chide Kit for his cluelessness or not. After all, he probably would have made the same decision.

As Kit was helping unload cartons of cargo, Baloo pulled Louie and several monkeys aside to explain his problem to them. “So, what would you say? I mean… my dad didn’t exactly have this conversation with me, he just left me to figure things out on my own. By which I mean, looking at the dirty pictures the older kids hid in the drainpipe behind the school.”

“Now there’s an idea,” one of the monkeys agreed. “Could even double as a birthday present so long as the boss doesn’t see what you gave him.”

“No, it isn’t! Kit deserves better,” Baloo snorted defensively. “I mean… I’m stuck wishing my dad had said something to me, because now I don’t know what to say to Kit. I don’t want him to be stuck in the same place some day if he has his own sons. What did your dads say to you?”

“Here’s a pack of condoms. If you get her pregnant, you’ll have to marry her and get a job,” one bartender said.

“There are girls you kiss and girls you bring home to meet the family,” another suggested.

“If you do it before marriage you’ll go to hell,” yet another answered. “They think that one works better than it does.”

“Didn’t any of us have a dad who had a normal conversation about the facts of life with us?” Baloo asked. The monkeys all shuffled and looked around. He sighed.

“Hey Papa Bear, what is everyone talking about?” Kit asked, coming up on the awkward group.

“Nothing!” they all answered in shouted unison, scrambling away to get back to pretending to do their jobs. Which, of course, meant Kit immediately knew they had been talking about _something_. 

.

On the return trip home, Baloo kept trying to think up another way to bring up the conversation. “So… um… Kit… anything… um… anything on your mind you want to talk about?”

“Pirates!”

“… You want to talk about pirates?”

“No, pirates in the mirror are closer than they appear!” he said, pointing. Baloo had been so lost in thought that he hadn’t even noticed that he was being followed.

“Well too bad for them, we just dropped off our cargo and Louie credited the payment towards our bill, so we’re not even carrying cash. So Karnage can just… wait, Karnage!”

“Baloo, what are you doing?” Kit asked in shock as Baloo started heading in for a landing.

“Just trust me on this one, Kit,” Baloo answered.

“Tremble before me, mere bears, for I am-“

“KARNAGE! Old buddy, old pal!” Baloo said, slapping his arm around Karnage’s shoulders. It wasn’t that hard to confuse Karnage, but Kit would honestly say it had been awhile since he’d seen Karnage quite *that* confused.

“Er… yes, yes, I am, but…”

Baloo didn’t let Karnage finish speaking. “I’m so glad to see you, pal. I’ve got a problem, and you might be just the person I need to talk to about it! Everyone else, stay right here,” he said, bodily hauling Karnage to the front of the plane. “Private conversation. Kit, you make sure none of that lot eavesdrops,” he said, pulling the curtains behind the front seats shut.

“What has broken in your brain?” Karnage asked in annoyance.

“I hate to do this, but I really need your help with something here. Look, Karny, I’m going to lay this right out on the line. Becky wants me to give Kit the talk, and I don’t know what to say to him. I mean, you were practically Kit’s dad for a year, right? So, you’ll help me out here, right?”

“Before he stabbed me in the back and ran off with you, that is…” Karnage answered slowly and suspiciously.

“Aw, let’s let bygones be bygones! We’ve had such good times since then!”

“No, we have not. What do you mean by ‘the talk?”

Ah, Baloo should have figured Karnage wouldn’t understand that euphemism. “You know. The birds and the bees?”

“You want me to lecture Kit on flying animals?” he asked in confusion.

“NO! I mean…” he leaned over and whispered into Karnage’s ear.

“Is he not a little young for that?” Karnage asked.

“That’s what I thought! But he’s sort of starting to get a little crush on a girl in school, so…”

“He wants to crush a girl in defeat? Maybe I impressioned upon him more than I thought.”

“That’s not what- you know what, never mind. Can you help me out here or not? I hate to say it, but I’m not exactly qualified to teach this, so I’ll concede that I could use some advice from a… let’s just say man with more experience, okay?”

“Hmmmmmmmm… do you have a pen and paper?”

“Yeah, here,” Baloo said, handing them over. “What are you writing?” he asked, looking over Karnage’s shoulder. 

“Directions to the nearest brothels. Do you want quality, convenience, or cost savings?” he asked.

“I’m not-“ he started to shout, then realized the others could hear him. “I’m not taking Kit to a brothel!” he whispered.

“Why not? That is what my Godfather did for me. You could not find a more experienced set of teachers.”

“He’s going to be thirteen!”

“I said he was too young, but you said he wanted to crush girls.”

“That’s not what a crush means.” All Baloo was trying to do is find someone who could explain where babies come from in a normal, reasonable way. Why was every single man he knew crazy? “Don’t you have any… I don’t know… like good advice your dad gave you on the topic?”

“The only advice my Godfather ever gave me was to be careful where you stick your dick, because if you put it in the wrong place, you might not like the outcome.” He paused. “I do not think that translated properly.”

Baloo sighed. “It translated better than you probably thought it did. Okay, look at it this way: Your crew is pretty dumb, right?”

“Only I get to call my crew dumb!”

“Just hold on for a second so I can finish talking. If one of your crew came to you and said hey captain, where do babies come from, what would you tell them?”

“I would ask them why they needed to know.”

“Come on, Karnage, work with me at least a little here!”

“I already gave you the answer to that and you did not like it!” Karnage replied, pointing to the paper. “Also, if you tell my wife about that list, I will have to kill you.”

“Oh for, hey, speaking of that, what about your daughter, then? What would you tell her if she asked about where babies come from?”

“We had that conversation and I told her to ask her mother.”

“You know what? Let’s forget we ever had this talk. We can reset back to your grand entrance and do this robbery thing like we usually do.”

“Pirating thing! I am not a robber,” he snapped, arms crossed.

.

Baloo and Kit arrived home, a bit tired from dealing with Karnage if fortunately not any worse for the wear from it. Wild Cat was waiting to align the headlights. As he was working, he noticed Baloo’s frown and distant expression. “Why the long face?” he asked Baloo.

Baloo sighed. Kit was further up the dock, out of hearing range, so he figured it couldn’t hurt to tell him. “Becky wants me to talk to Kit about where babies come from, but ever guy I’ve talked to so far has only had BAD ideas about what to say.”

“Oh, that’s easy!” Wild Cat said cheerfully. “I can tell him exactly what my dad told me!”

“You… you can? Oh, man, you’re a lifesaver!” Baloo smiled. Wow, maybe he should have asked Wild Cat first.

“Hey Kit,” Wild Cat called.

“Yes?” Kit asked, coming back down the dock.

He pulled Kit over to the wiring for the headlights. “This is a male connector,” he said brightly, holding up a wire. “And this is a female connector! When you plug the male into the female, surprise! You get electricity!” he said as the lights came on.

Baloo’s jaw dropped. Kit stared blankly at Wild Cat. “Uh… okay…” he finally said slowly in confusion. “I’m glad that you fixed that,” he finished before heading off back towards the main building.

“What… what was THAT?” Baloo asked angrily.

“That’s how my dad explained where babies come from,” Wild Cat explained. He paused in what passed for deep thought for him. “But now that you mention it, I’ve never seen an engine have a baby.”

.

Rebecca was still working when he came back into the building. When she looked up at him Baloo pre-empted her “You don’t need to tell me again, I’m still trying to figure out what I’m going to say. I just wish my dad had this conversation with me so I’d have some idea of what I’m doing!”

“That’s why it’s important that you talk to Kit, so he won’t end up feeling the same way.”

“I know, I know, but that doesn’t make it any easier.”

“What’s that note in your pocket?” Rebecca asked, taking it from him.

“Oh, uh, that’s-“

“A LIST OF BROTHELS?!”

“That was Karny’s suggestion, not mine! And no, I’m not going to take it. Also he didn’t want me to tell his wife he gave me that list so, yah. Think what you want about that.”

“You asked…” she sighed and slapped her forehead with her palm.

“It’s better than what Wild Cat said!”

She gave him a cold look. “Why would you even ask him. Well, what did Wild Cat say?”

Realizing he had just walked himself into a bear trap, Baloo gulped.

.

“Kit?” Baloo asked, knocking lightly on Kit’s door.

“Come in,” he answered. He was working on his homework.

Baloo entered and sat on the bed. “Kit, uh… I… I want to have a little conversation with you. No, you’re not in trouble!” he added when Kit looked worried. “I just think… well, you’re going to be thirteen soon. So maybe it’s time we talked about… ya know… the… birds and the bees. You see, Kit, when a man and a woman really love each other-“

“Baloo, are you trying to give me a talk about sex?” Kit asked abruptly. Had Baloo been drinking anything, he would have choked on it.

“Well… yes. Miz Cunningham, she thought that since we’re close, I should probably…”

“Papa Bear… um… coach already gave us the talk.”

“… What?”

“Yeah, he said most of our parents wouldn’t tell us what we needed to know, but he wanted to be sure we didn’t get ourselves into trouble before graduating.”

“Well I’ll be…” So, he went through all that trouble… for nothing?!

He was broken out of his thoughts by Kit giving him a hug. “I really appreciate that you’d want to do that for me, though,” he said.

Baloo returned his hug. “Anything for you, Kit. Anything for you.”


End file.
